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by dyingsureisfun



Series: mainline canon is fake (Tales From the SMP Fics) [1]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Tales From The SMP - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: (implied) - Freeform, Angst, Blood and Injury, Dream Team SMP Spoilers, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Immortal dream, Immortality, M/M, Minecraft, Murder, No Dialogue, Non-Human Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Reincarnation, Respawn, The Town That Went Mad Spoilers, Time Travel, Vomiting, Walking, could definitely use some polishing up but eh, could expand on this because i have more ideas, here, no beta we die like... everyone in this story, once again implied, only for a line but just in case, so it's not quite how i want it, so that might be something that happens, there's so much walking in this..., time traveler karl, wanted this to be longer but i haven't slept and have no beta reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28543161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dyingsureisfun/pseuds/dyingsureisfun
Summary: Cornelius wakes up a long way from home.
Relationships: Corpse Huband | Cat & Dream | Cornelius, Corpse Husband | Cat/Dream | Cornelius, Tubbo | Robin & Dream | Cornelius
Series: mainline canon is fake (Tales From the SMP Fics) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2096232
Comments: 19
Kudos: 307





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**Author's Note:**

> !- this is not shipping the real life people! do not ship the CC! if any CC express discomfort at this/this kind of fic it will be taken down immediately! -!

Cornelius comes to, staring blankly at the blue sky. Large, soft-looking clouds drift overhead, and tall blades of grass sway in the gentle wind around the edges of his vision. The sounds of distant laughter echo in his ears, and he can practically see his partner swinging Robin around in the air, the both of them smiling and laughing the whole time.

He blinks and the sounds evaporate.

Panic grips him, and he moves to sit up, only to be struck with burning pain. His skin feels like it’s melting, his insides burning, mouth full of cotton, skull pounding. He just barely manages to roll over in time before he pukes, stomach scrounging for anything to hurl up at all.

It takes a long time before he’s able to move again after that, limbs feeling like they’ve been filled with metal.

He drags himself over to a nearby tree, collapsing against it, waiting for the world to stop swimming. He doesn’t know how long he sits there, but by the time he looks up again, the sun is painting the west half of the sky in pinks and oranges.  ~~ The part of his brain that misses his family whispers to him that Robin would’ve loved to see it. ~~

Cornelius hauls himself to his feet and tries his best to pull his thoughts together, ignoring the way the world still seems fuzzy around the edges as best as he can. The last thing he remembers is the sharp pain of an axe blade swinging through his torso (though distantly, through a layer of static, he remembers falling into unbearable heat, nails scraping against his skin in desperation), and yet he’s here now. Alone and far away from his village. From his family.

He sways slightly, braces himself against the rough bark of a nearby tree, and scans the horizon. Cornelius had found the village on his travels once, he could do it again.

The moon rises steadily in the east as he limps his way through the woods. It gives him just enough light that he manages not to trip over the exposed roots that litter his path. He wishes desperately for a torch, but his pockets stay as empty as they were when he woke up.

His teeth have begun to chatter by the time the sun starts to rise, and his body aches, but he presses on, pulling his cloak (since when did he have a cloak?) tighter around himself.

Cornelius walks. He walks and doesn’t stop walking till he stumbles across a village, not his, but he considers it enough for now when collapses into the first bed he’s seen in days. 

(Elsewhere, the first notification he’s seen in the chat since he’s gotten there appears in his chat,  _ Dream _ _ has earned the achievement  _ **_Sweet Dreams_ ** )

When Cornelius awakens again, it’s before the sun has fully risen. He quietly takes the bag the kindly woman who housed him gifted him, and slips out into the dawn. He doesn’t look back.

Something wounds its way into a knot in Cornelius’s gut as he walks. He’s supposed to be dead. Chopped in half, bled out, gone. Leaving behind his husband and not quite-yet (way too young to see one of his parents die twice) son. And yet he’s here. Here and walking and about a million miles away from where he wants to be. And he doesn’t know why. 

He’d locked away the thoughts that he imagined the whole thing, not willing to live in a world where those he cared about didn’t even exist. Where he didn’t have a purpose. Where all his life ever was and would be was eternal wandering. Where he was alone. His cloak (seriously  _ where _ had he gotten it from?) always felt warmer whenever those thoughts managed to drift their way to the front of his mind.

A feeling of utter wrongness sweeps over him when he finally ( _ finally _ ) steps foot back into the pine forest that surrounds his village. Everything seems too quiet, even though he knows the village is still nearly a mile into the woods.

He shrugs it off to the best of his ability, focusing instead on how close he is to being able to hold his family again. How close he is to being able to hear Robin’s sweet voice as they describe to Cat the surroundings of their house for the millionth time. How close he is to no longer being alone.

His heart grows lighter and lighter with every step, and he’s practically sprinting through the familiar woods, bag bouncing against his leg.

He rounds a tree and he’s on the old hard-packed dirt path, and he feels like crying tears of joy. After so long he’s  _ so close _ to being back where he belongs.

Cornelius Westaken bursts back into the old village after months of travel, only to find it quiet, empty, and smelling of death.

Cornelius peaks into all of the small houses only to find the rotting remains of what he can only guess were his neighbors. 

Cornelius stands alone and in shock as he stares at the impersonal retelling of what happened. The one written by a man who simply calls himself the Narrator. The one where after he died his husband and son were wrongfully thrown into a lava pool because of the rest of the villagers. (In a cold twisted way he’s glad the rest of them are dead because he knows he’d have killed them himself if they weren’t)

Cornelius cries cold and alone over the loss of his husband, who was murdered over the fact that he was  _ blind _ and unable to tell the others who had killed Cornelius. He cries over the loss of his son who was a measly  _ ten years _ of age when he saw both sets of his parents die one after the other, and was thrown into the lava simply because the village thought he “wasted too many resources”.

Dream leaves his village for the last time that night, clutching close to his heart Cat’s cane and Robin’s spare hat. 

And if he cuts his hair short like Robin, welds the last piece of his beloved’s cane into his weapon, and starts wearing a mask over his face and his heart? It’s his secret.

~~ And years down the line, as the world explodes around him like he knew it would, he shields a too young president as best as he can without being obvious. He knows as much as he claims he did, he never really let go. ~~

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this lovely piece of art: https://twigglesz.tumblr.com/post/639334750476173312/homeless


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